NEW YORK — Andrew Neitlich is the last person you'd expect to be rattled by the stock market.

He once worked as a financial analyst picking stocks for a mutual fund. He has huddled with dozens of CEOs in his current career as an executive coach. During the dot-com crash 12 years ago, he kept his wits and did not sell.

But he's selling now.

“You have to trust your government. You have to trust other governments. You have to trust Wall Street,” says Neitlich, 47. “And I don't trust any of these.”

Defying decades of investment history, ordinary Americans are selling stocks for a fifth year in a row. The selling has not let up despite unprecedented measures by the Federal Reserve to persuade people to buy and the come-hither allure of a levitating market. Stock prices have doubled from March 2009.

It's the first time ordinary folks have sold during a sustained bull market since relevant records were first kept during World War II, an examination by the Associated Press has found. The AP analyzed money flowing into and out of stock funds of all kinds, including relatively new exchange-traded funds, which investors like because of their low fees.

“People don't trust the market anymore,” says financial historian Charles Geisst of Manhattan College. He says a “crisis of confidence” similar to one after the crash of 1929 will keep people away from stocks for a generation or more.

The implications for the economy and living standards are unclear but potentially big. If the pullback continues, it could lead to lower spending by companies, slower U.S. economic growth and perhaps lower gains for those who remain in the market.

Since they started selling in April 2007, individual investors have pulled at least $380 billion from U.S. stock funds.

Instead of stocks, they're putting money into bonds because those are widely perceived as safer investments. Individuals have put more than $1 trillion into bond mutual funds alone since April 2007, according to the Investment Company Institute, a trade group representing investment funds.

Selling during both a downturn and a recovery is unusual because Americans almost always buy more than they sell during both. Since World War II, nine recessions besides the Great Recession have been followed by recoveries lasting at least three years.

The unusual pullback this time has spread to other big investors: public and private pension funds, investment brokerages and state and local governments.

On Wall Street, the investor revolt largely has been dismissed as temporary. But doubts are creeping in.

A Citigroup research report sent to customers concludes that the “cult of equities” that fueled buying in the past has little chance of coming back soon. Investor blogs speculate about the “death of equities,” a line from a famous BusinessWeek cover story in 1979, another time many people had seemingly given up on stocks.

“People aren't looking to swing for the fences anymore,” says Gary Goldstein, an executive recruiter on Wall Street, referring to the bankers and traders he helps get jobs. “They're getting less greedy.”

Those counting the small investor out could be wrong.

Three years after that BusinessWeek story on the “death of equities” ran, in 1982, one of the greatest multiyear stock climbs in history began as the little guys shed their fear and started buying. And so they surely will do again, the bulls argue, and stock prices will really rocket.

Neitlich, the executive coach, has his doubts.

Instead of using extra cash to buy stocks, he is buying houses near his home in Sarasota, Fla., and renting them. He says stocks make up 12 percent of his $800,000 investment portfolio, down from nearly 100 percent a few years ago.

After the dot-com crash, it seemed as if “things would turn around. Now, I don't know,” Neitlich says. “The risks are bigger than before.”